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Editorial Reviews

The best of The Future Sound of London! FSOL were formed by Brian Dougans and Gary Cobain in the early 90's and are seen to be one of the most respected and influential electronic acts of the past 15 years. Their work enabling them to incorporate elements of classical, hip hop, electronica, industrial, punk and dub to create expansive tracks laden with samples exquisitely produced and pretty unique. FSOL are an important part of the journey from post rave electronica, with music that has successfully experimented and crossed the boundaries of trip hop, ambient, hip hop, jungle and even punk, or certainly a punk-rock attitude. 15 tracks in all. EMI.

In hindsight- the Future Sound Of London were no doubt the most creative and interesting electronic "bands" to come out of the electronic and techno explosion of the early 90's as this compilation demonstrates. One can see (well almost) and hear the best elements of ambient classical and techno mixed with a very organic almost liquid sound- and as far as production these boys were and are the best. Key moments from their catalogue are spread across this collection- from the sunrise world techno of papua new guinea and expander to the ambient beat driven classics lifeforms and cascade that literally sound like no other music before or since. Throw in their strange take on triphop ala far out son and my kingdom and its easy to see how amazing this duo was. Amazing cinematic ambient tracks littered with one of a kind samples and the propulsive almost jungle throb of We have explosive fill out the rest of the material. My only complaint is a few track selections( and omissions) mainly max and antique toy which are subpar- would have loved to see more tracks from ISDN and ofcourse nothing off their different label masterpiece The Isness appears due to legal matters. All in all- this is probally all the casual or new fan would need but both Dead Cities(an agressive industrial styled ambient cd) and ISDN(weird live recorded triphop radio transmissions with free from jazz touches) along with the Isness(modern pyschedilia are all highly recommended. Heres hoping a dvd comp of their amazing video and film projects comes soon.

if you already have Dead Cities then you have about half of the songs on this album already (which are some of the best and flow better in the album form). Then I would get ISDN and maybe some of the singles.

i don't actually have this album, but i am a huge FSOL fan and have all these tracks on the original albums. if you are new to FSOL this album would be a good place to start as it covers a lot of their work.